Pen Pal Letters Use 'Snail' Mail
In October, Palo Community Schools' sixth grade class received their first batch of letters from Mohomou Refugee School for the 2003/2004 school year. There was much excitement as we read all the letters aloud. Each sixth grader chose their own pen pal from the letters, and wrote the first letter to his/her pen pal.
We sent the letters at the end of October, then waited for the replies. And waited ... and waited. Samuel (a teacher at Mohomou) emailed me several times, but each time he said the letters had not yet reached them.
Once they received the letters, the students at Mohomou responded immediately, and those responses reached us on May 11th, 2004. It was such an exciting day! The Mohomou students had sent beaded bracelets for their Palo pen pals, and Samuel had sent me an African brocaded blouse and new pictures of Emmanuel Judy, taken when he was three months old. Also, there were some lovely beaded necklaces for us to sell at the World Market at our International Dinner.
Many of the Mohomou students included drawn maps of Liberia and gave information about their country in their letters. Most interesting to my students was the responses to the questions my students had asked them about how they had become refugees, and the photos they had sent. There was one photo of Samuel with the soccer team with a note on the back that said, "After training with the footballs you sent to us, we went to another refugee camp and defeated their school." My students were really happy about that!
My sixth graders were anxious to write back to their pen pals, of course. They learned how to make macrame bracelets, and each sixth grader made one for his/her pen pal. These bracelets were sent with the pen pal letters, along with photos of the International Dinner.
The dinner was held on May 21st to raise money for the computer lab for Mohomou School. The sixth graders worked very hard helping to plan and put on the dinner. They were very pleased that we raised over $1500, in spite of the fact that we had a power outage that afternoon and had to hold the dinner with no electricity! They are hoping that Mohomou School will soon be able to have a computer lab and it will be possible for them to email their pen pals next year.
This has been an exciting and worthwhile project for my sixth grade class. They've developed writing skills, communication skills, presentation skills, and social skills through their involvement with the RESPECT pen pal project. They have learned caring, compassion, and respect for students living in refugee camps. And they felt compelled to do something to help make the lives of children around the world a little easier.